Post navigation

My Open Marriage and Unused Hall Pass

I think it’s a sign when your husband tells you he doesn’t mind if you sleep with other men if it will satisfy you and make you happier. On the condition that he doesn’t know about it ever and he doesn’t see or feel anything different in our relationship.

This is announced to me one day after watching the movie “Hall Pass”.

It takes me several months to believe that he’s telling me the truth…we have many conversations about this in different ways…I triangulate his responses to see if he changes them. He doesn’t. And it takes a while to get my head around whether that will work for me. Being essentially sexless for so long…how can I make it work? How can I get over my belief that sex outside a marriage is wrong?

I tell him that I don’t feel the same way and in classic husband style he says “I’m going to do whatever I want anyway and if you don’t know any better, why does it matter?”

He does have a point. I ponder this for a long time and remember that our belief system in North America is in the minority. My friends from Europe see affairs as healthy and they aren’t intended to break up marriages. Hmm.

Once I realize he’s serious, and I get over my initial reservations, then I think it’s sad when I have a hall pass and it goes unused. For months. Nobody seems to want my hall pass and I don’t find anyone all that interesting to use it with.

Then there is one guy from work, a contractor who I meet, and we go out after work and I meet his friends and we have great conversations and lots of drinks and there is definitely an intellectual affair going on. He shares that he has had affairs before and he’s not interested again because of how complicated it can be. Of course being new to all this it makes no sense and I can’t understand why I can’t use my hall pass on him. And I realize that this kind of affair for my husband is probably worse than the sexual kind because we are talking about life and work and love and travel and all those things that my husband and I have.

So I’m resigned to having an open marriage and not taking advantage of it. One night though this colleague and I are out for dinner and I guess he just decides just once he needs to see what I’m like. We go to a public park (A PUBLIC PARK…WHAT AM I, 16?) and we make out for what feels like forever and lay down in the grass and he puts his fingers up my skirt and I have the first orgasm I’ve had in months…he’s very pleased with himself. He’s very good with his hands. I return the favor but discover in the process that this huge guy, this tall with big hands guy, has the smallest penis maybe I’ve ever seen. Sigh.

So I realize that I’m not really missing out and I’m okay with the fact that we aren’t going to have sex.

But just like when you are at a party and you go pee after many drinks…he’s broken the seal and I start to realize what I’m missing. And I really miss it. A lot.

Unusual body shapes, including your colleague and his small penis are, in an ideal world, not the main point of sex, even in one night stands or hall pass or marriage versions of sex. Too big can be just as alarming for some ladies as too small. I’m just old enough to believe good sex is still based on primal loving instincts, even in the immediate sex category. Suggestion: the next time you find a guy who is a good lover, and his penis size is a drawback, but the feelings are right…surprise yourself and give him a try anyway.

So this is your genesis, huh? I remember my own in this and, oh, fifteen minutes after we agreed to open our marriage, I was asking myself, “Okay, now what?” Then it was another month or so before I finally got to use the hall pass my wife had given me – and that was because when you’re a guy and tell women you’re in an open marriage and that it’s okay that we fuck, they never believe you…

I had no idea what to do. For the longest time I assumed he wasn’t serious. Fidelity was always incredibly important to me (still is, actually) and the thought of being with another man, outside of my marriage, was anathema to me.

It is an interesting start to your vaca, Ann! To see where you are today after this post – all that you have been through and experienced – is amazing. Have you thought about where you would be had you not been given your hall pass? Where would you be if you and your ex were still together yet living like this?

Will… my marriage was never open. At least not for me. I offered it to him a few times, I don’t think he used the pass and I don’t really care any more. Not that I would have cared back then either, otherwise I wouldn’t have given the pass. I wanted him to be happy, satisfied too, whether by me or someone else (to think that now he resents me for having a short lived fling… is funny in a way!).
But even without the hall pass… I still left. Because it’s not just the sexless part of the marriage, it’s everything that goes with it, the denigration, the disdain, the disrespect. At some point, it just becomes unbearable :-/

I think we would probably be together still, OR he would have broken up with me and I would have been devastated and lost. That experience definitely opened my eyes to what I’d been missing…not sure things would be the same now if he hadn’t said that to me that night.

I love the way you write.. Such vision is found in your words!
First… I often wonder how my husband would feel if I slept with another man and then after pondering this for a while I assume he would kill me and said man. He’s a pretty jealous angry individual. Then I was thinking last night how I would feel if I found out he had sex with someone else… I’d kill him. Which left me thinking about what would happen if I had sex with someone else and just didn’t tell him, how would I feel? I doubt I would feel much of anything considering the way our marriage is going. Guess we shall see what happens in the future.

Why thank you!! I am no longer married; we ended things over three years ago. There are some posts that speak to the breakdown of the marriage and how we became sexless. I think if you go to the “about my marriage” page the posts will be listed there. If you can’t find them let me know and I will get the links for you.

Categories

Archives

I’m sometimes pithy.

About my images

I do not have the copyright for any of the images on my site unless specifically mentioned. For the last many months, I have used vintage or historical images. If I do not attribute a specific source, it's because there are multiple sources and the image is widely available.
If I've used something of yours and not credited it, please contact me on my "contact me" page, and accept my apologies in advance - I will make it right.